News

Photoshop CS4

I have been beta testing Photoshop/Bridge CS4 over the last few months and I’m pleased to say there are some real improvements to the stability, speed and usability of the programs.

Most of the improvements benefit high end rather than production retouching (rotating canvas, content aware scale etc), I have used these tools for real retouching jobs and been suitably impressed.

On the downside metadata handling has not been improved (The same “Multiple values” bug when appending keywords and captions as per CS3) and there is still no central configuration system for all the varied settings.

As far as I can see all my client CS3 actions run without modification on CS4 – will check this when I recieve the retail code.

I will contine to support CS3 for the forseable future so dont feel you will be left behind if you don’t upgrade. Workflow and retouching workshops can be held with either CS3 or CS4.

Stephen

VAT Calculator (updated)

I originally posted this in 2005 but noticed recently from the log files that the original file was moved some time ago in a reorganisation.
I have restored the file so the link works now:

As some of you know, I use Visual Basic to make custom windows programs. Most of these programs are highly specialized and written to fit into a specific workflow. Occasionally I write something a bit more general. VAT-calc is a tiny application that presents just three fields. You can enter a number into any of these fields and the other fields update to provide the missing figures. So for instance if you know the price including vat then just enter this figure in the inc field and the program will show you the VAT exclusive price and the VAT value. All very useful stuff if you are VAT registered.

You can buy vatcalc from the store link on this website.

Image investment

One of the main problems in delivering high technical quality images to the market has been the cost of suitable digital cameras.

Affordability has been pretty poor in the last few years but with the resourgence of competition between Nikon and Canon nobody should be very far away from at least 12megapixel bodies which I consider to be the minimum requirement for high end stock.

Canon today released details of the 5D MKII which with 21mp and a price of £2300 means that anyone earning a reasonable amount from stock can up the quality of their shots and potentially get sales from bigger (and better) repro uses.

It goes without saying that technical quality isnt the end of the story, but I have retouched too many fantastic images that were too small for even full page use….

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0809/08091705canon_5dmarkII.asp

Beta Canon 1ds mkII Profile for UK Garden Photographers

Part of my clientel are a number of garden photographers and as is known amongst this group that Canon cameras (unlike Nikon) tend to make green garden foliage a little too yellow.

Thankfully Adobe have released ACR 4.5 with better support for external camera profiles. If you have Photoshop CS3 and its fully up to date then download this beta profile I have made and put it in one of the following locations:

On Mac OS X:
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CameraRaw/CameraProfiles

On Windows 2000 / XP:
C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication SupportAdobeCameraRawCameraProfiles

On Windows Vista:
C:ProgramDataAdobeCameraRawCameraProfiles

The profile gives more accurate garden greens for the UK.
Download the profile here

Once the profile is copied, restart Photoshop and open a raw image taken on a mkII. Select the camera icon on the raw converter tab, then from the NAME dropdown select the profile.

Let me have any comments.
Stephen

Processing large quantities of images for output levels

As some of you know Im not too keen on Image Libraries such as Getty and Corbis asking for attenuated output levels on submissions (Getty ask for 3-252 for instance).

Continue to use the full bandwidth if needed in your Master files, with proper colour management any CMYK you make for your own projects will handle the range through colour management.

Given that libraries ask for these compromised files however I have been developing a windows program that can sort large collections of images and automatically place them into 4 folders for processing to required output levels. This pre selection process allows images that are already in the legal range to be left alone and images that have just illegal highlights or shadows put into separate directories with the last directory being for images with illegal values at both ends of the range. Files in these folders can them be processed though my special “legal levels” actions that acheive the required levels without compromising mid tone contrast.

I will be mainly using this program to process clients images when they request files for agency submission, I am however prepared to sell the program for your own use at a cost of £60+VAT. More details to follow.

Getty Upload Portal

The Getty upload portal is alive and working now.
I have been very impressed with the quality of the thought and functionality in the interface, there is no doubt that the team at Getty have done a good job.

A few related notes:

1. Clients can use Quality 12 Jpegs derived from the Getty tiffs workflow to upload to the portal instead of burning them to CD/DVD.

2. You will need to place a short caption in the headline field. In general this is usually the first sentence of the main caption.

As you know Im keen that your Master Tiffs collection use only Industry Standard IPTC so with this in mind I would advise that you change the keywords on the Getty tiff/Jpegs to reflect their need for up to 5 conceptual keywords but retain the full keywords in your Master Tiff files.

Retain you Master Tiffs but delete the Getty tiffs/jpegs once you have had the result of the edit.

Any questions? – get in touch

Imaging Workflow workshops

Im looking into the possibility of holding larger workshops to pass on my advice and tips on imaging workflow.

These workshops would be held in slightly more convinient places to get to than the North Norfolk Coast and would of course be cheaper for each individual as the costs would be spread over a number of attenddees. If you would be interested in such workshops then please let me know via emails so I could get an idea of numbers.

If you require a more 1:1 workshop in which I can review your pictures and offer more tailored advice then please get in touch to discuss requirements, I offer places for 1-3 attenddess in Sheringham so you can either come by yourself or bring some freinds and collegues and spread the cost between you.

Stephen

Connecting to UNIX shares from Vista

I have covered this before but because of recent changes to Vista (sp1) I have had to redo my LAN security to connect to shares on a local Buffalo Teratation. It looks like its these older devices only that are affected as my new Linux server and a new Terastation Pro 2 dont have this problem.

SO: If you have difficulty logging onto an older terastation with Vista try the following:

Click “Start -> Run.” Then, type in the Run field: “secpol.msc.” That will bring you to Vista’s security policy system. Once there, use “Go to: Local Policies > Security Options” and then find “Network Security: LAN Manager” authentication level. Once there, change the Setting from “Send NTLMv2 response only” to “Send LM & NTLM — use NTLMv2 session security if negotiated.”

Stephen